


Apparition

by Lord_Martin_of_Fail_Mountain



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:00:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_Martin_of_Fail_Mountain/pseuds/Lord_Martin_of_Fail_Mountain
Summary: On a forsaken night, Elsa is accused of witchcraft by zealous Overseers. Cornered, it is up to her brother to protect her against members of his own order. Surprisingly - or not - though, there are more dangerous individuals traversing the shadows of Dunwall, and not all of them seek to harm the helpless.





	Apparition

Another forsaken night in Dunwall. Nobody around to listen to the plight of the suffering everyman, the plagued, the poor, the unfortunate. Or so it seemed.

The dark, cold streets of this dirty city did have some order in their abandonment. It was in the angles of the architecture, the straightness of the brick and concrete walls and the chimneys of factories rising above the roofs. The universal, gloomy grayness of it all, the all-encompassing smell of smoke and old trash and sewage hiding the stench of death.

There were guards here and there, at the more important streets anyway, vigilant as they could be as mere men themselves. The speakers all around the various districts blared the echoing, calm voice of the announcer reminding everyone of the curfew in effect. Overseers in their golden masks were out looking for strange folks who practiced – or were thought to practice – the dark arts of the Outsider. The boulevards and high roads where people lived were well-protected.

Of course, most of Dunwall was taken by the plague and left to its own devices, locked off. A whole district was flooded from neglect. There were blocks and blocks taken by gangs. Streets where only the weepers shambled about, moaning, groaning, puking, suffering – the last stage of the plague before death. Houses were broken into and scavenged, trash bins opened up and rummaged through. There were many broken windows boarded up. Squatting vagrants. Desperate families dying of the malady and simple hunger. There was filthy water, dust and sickness.

And there were the rats. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands and more. Roaming in packs, like the miniature, vile wolves they were, eating everything they could get their maws on.

Rats, thugs and the plague were not on the forefront of Elsa’s problems though, not this moment. Not when all that separated her from the scrutiny of the Overseers becoming physical was her brother Berthold. He did not have his own mask of office on, but his colleagues did – identical, golden, yelling faces with the Abbey’s symbol on their foreheads.

“Please, she’s my sister! She’s not a witch! I know her!” Berthold pled, standing between them and her. He was defiant, but his shoulders were sagging, and Elsa could see his ears were red in the dim lantern-light.

“Out of the way!” one of the masked men said, stepping closer. He held a gloved finger up, pointing it into Berthold’s face. “You expect preferential treatment just because you are her brother?” Then, suddenly, the snarling metal head shifted and looked past him, right at Elsa. She stepped back with her hands going up to her chest. “She will _burn!”_ the man shouted from behind the staring mask. “All witches must burn!”

Elsa was shaking her head, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Berthold, don’t let them take me! I swear I’ve done nothing wrong!” she cried out, eyes desperately looking around for help. What if Berthold could not stop these zealous men intent on bloodshed? But what help would there be, here in a side street off the heavily guarded John Clavering Boulevard? Overseers _were_ the help, the authority.

There was nobody here. A shadowy underpass cut into rock, a set of stairs blocked by the men, and beyond that, the dirty concrete road with its piles of trash boxed in by the backs of buildings, only a sliver of the sky visible, the moon’s shine turning to gloom through the smoke.

And then, as the Overseer shoved past her brother, Berthold grabbing hold of his hand to try and stop him, the other going for his sword, a figure _appeared_ balancing on a street lamp. Right on top of it. Clad in a black coat, much like the Overseers and Berthold, but with a hood, and… Elsa saw a blade, and a nightmarish face, and then the man was gone, receding into flecks of _shadow,_ disappearing like an apparition.

“Silence your lying tongue, foul witch!” the Overseer was growling, freeing himself aggressively from Berthold’s grasp when the man on the lamppost materialized next to him. Elsa gasped before anyone else even realized he was there.

The man standing in front of her was tall, and the monstrous metal patchwork of a skull was not his face – it was a mask, very different from the golden visages of the Overseers. His boots were firm on the ground, one heel scraping as he pivoted, the hilt of his shining short sword lashing out.

The hit slammed into the Overseer’s face with a metallic clang, sending the man reeling back. Berthold and the other one yanked their own swords from their scabbards, but the apparition was fast and already on the move, before the Overseer could get his bearings from the disorienting hit.

“Berthold, stay back!” Elsa called out as his brother’s eyes went wide, and the mysterious man raised his sword, bringing it down on the other Overseer. That one was fast though, and the parry rang through the street. The specter twirled and slashed again, the Overseer growling at him and parrying again. That is where his comrade in zeal regained his bearings and raised his own sword.

The man disappeared into a black cloud the Overseer’s sword slashed through, stirring it up before it completely disappeared. The skull-masked man was suddenly a couple of steps ahead. One of the zealots went in for a slash, and the other pulled his pistol as the man dodged. Elsa stepped back, grabbing Berthold’s hand and clamping down, her brother stepping in front of her.

There was a smack and a scrape and the Overseer’s pistol clattered onto the ground, wrenched from his hand by a mighty slash. Both the zealots were shouting now, one of them inarticulate, the other crying _“Die!”_ Again, the man danced around them, dodging an attack, parrying another…

Elsa gasped again as the warrior’s blade burst from the back of the neck of the closest Overseer. A drop of blood fell from the tip, then the blade was gone, and the man was dodging backwards, the Overseer coughing and sputtering as he fell to his knees and crashed onto the ground with his hands on his throat. The man turned to the other and, curiously, did a defiant flourish with his sword, sending drops of blood onto the concrete.

_“Heretic!”_ the Overseer bellowed and attacked.

The clash of the swords was a harsh symphony, _clang, whoosh, chink, scrape._ The two men were a match, and Elsa, for a moment, could not decide which one was more intimidating. The one with the golden snarl was loud and rabid, shouting _“Burn! Die!”_ The other was silent, a black, unmoving face of many angles, sheets of metal and wire. Unquestionably trained. And calm.

When the Overseer slashed at him over his head, the man finally dashed to the side. The swords found each other again like magnets, but this time the man followed up, his hand going round, leading both blades. The Overseer lost his balance, and his blade was thrown at the rock wall. There was a gasp of disbelief.

And then the apparition’s blade ripped through the Overseer’s stomach, coming out the back of his uniform coat. For a second, he was almost lifted off the ground, and when the man yanked his sword out, a line of blood splattered onto the concrete, splashing all the way to the stairs a few strides back.

There was a heartbeat where nobody moved. Elsa and Berthold could all but feel the man’s eyes on them, regarding them from behind the tinted lenses of his unusual mask. Then, before the Overseer could fall to his knees, he raised the sword and beheaded the _bastard._ The blade ran through like the man’s neck was nothing, no obstruction. So fell Berthold’s other – former – colleague, his body crumpling like a heavy sack, and his head sounding like an iron bucket was dropped.

And then, there was silence.

The man stood between the bodies, both quiet and unmoving now, his boots planted firmly on the ground. He was dressed much like Berthold, which was curious – in a long coat, ornate but belonging to a soldier. Everything dark and shadowy.

The only sound was the dripping of blood from the blade. Elsa’s gaze was fixed on him. She did not know who he was, but she knew _what_ he was. She still held her brother’s hand. Berthold had his weapon in his other hand. He glanced at it with some nervousness.

Overhead, throughout the city, the hanging loudspeakers crackled to life with piercing static, and the all-familiar, formal voice started its echoing announcement.

“Attention, Dunwall Citizens. Report all deceased family members to the local Dead Counter. Unreported deaths are a punishable offense.”

The speakers winded down after the blaring words with a pulsing noise, and then it was only the air moving through the alley. The man still stood like a statue, the skull’s eyes staring.

Then his wrist moved, and his sword twirled, and Elsa’s heart skipped a beat, and then the sword snapped in half like a jackknife. The man stuffed it away onto his belt, spreading his hands to show he was unarmed.

“I mean you no harm,” he said. His voice was slightly gravelly, but young. Elsa felt he was younger than her, with her almost pushing forty.

It was Berthold who spoke while Elsa could only stare, with the thought of the man disappearing and rematerializing from existence at the forefront of her mind.

“You appeared as if from nowhere,” her brother said. “We would both be dead if not for you.”

Finally, Elsa stepped forward as well, letting go of her brother.

“We are forever in your debt. I cannot thank you enough!” she said, realizing she was shaking her head in disbelief.

“You are safe now,” the man said, his masked face turning between them. “But you have to get out of the city. Can you manage that?”

Elsa and Berthold exchanged a long look.

“Yes. I must get my sister to safety,” Berthold said to the man. “But first I may know of a way to thank you.”

“There is no need,” their savior held up a hand.

“There is a safe in the bunkhouse,” Berthold insisted. “The combination is 3 2 0. Take what you want, and good luck. I will not return there.”

There was a moment of silence, the man looking over his shoulder, possibly thinking about the bunkhouse. Did he know where it was? The way he looked was indeed where he needed to go to find it.

“Thank you,” the man said and offered a gracious bow.

“No, thank _you,”_ Berthold said.

“Yes,” Elsa nodded.

The man then bent down and grabbed the hands of the headless Overseer on the ground. “Go. You were never here,” he said, and started dragging the body, leaving a thick trail of blood. Elsa did not move until Berthold grabbed hold of her hand and started pulling her with him. His strides were long and determined to get out of here, to go far away, and Elsa all but ran to keep up.

She took one last look at the mysterious man who saved her, a glance over her shoulder. The man looked up from the dead body and she was certain he had caught her eye. Then, she turned away and soon they were ducking onto the next street, Berthold not sheathing his sword. He did not speak. He looked like he had seen a ghost and was wondering if he had merely imagined what he saw.

As they hurried down the street, under the shadow of abandoned buildings, Elsa reached into her pocket and closed her fist over the comforting bone charm, all but hearing its whisper, like a heartbeat through water in his ears.


End file.
